Eighty-one nights until December 24th, and Settia planned to impress upon Vinesun that she should be his one and only during every minute of every dark hour. She shivered with happiness. If dreams went well, he’d place binding tendrils round her stem while the lilies sang. The pompous palm, eldest plant in the ten acres, would call out his-her blessing. She-he’d oversee a vine and an ornamental pronouncing the sacred oath—two plants promise to stand as one until death do them mulch.

Then every marigold, petunia, rose…really, the grass even? Vinesun’s past would no longer matter. If he popped the question—not if, but when he asked to dew Settia and her alone, the multitudes Vinesun had relations with would learn he’d been bonded tight, forever hers.

She’d make him so happy. He’d laugh, weeping fat drops of sap she’d lick from his, you know, while her cuttings slumbered and paid his groans of joy no mind. Come daybreak, he’d tell them stories of his wanderings before he glued to one plant—me! They’d swallow Vinesun’s words along with the sun, and grow strong and straight.

Settia’s vine would never hire a scum-toad lawyer to chew him free, strangle her dead, or creep off in pursuit of petunia. She’d make him forget the cheap, double-blossomed plants ever existed. She’d mold her little branches into his thickest one, as wide as she could reach, big, swollen hunk that he is. Bonded in eternal bliss, they’d watch Hell-day dawn together. Without a biped alive, there’d be no one left to torture plants for some obscure, human holiday again.

A horrid noise, footsteps heavy and familiar, shattered Settia from her happy place. With a poof, her fantasy exploded into tiny fragments of get it together, or she’d never see Vinesun down on one tendril in front of her.

TBR: How do you develop your characters?Arlene: Take psychological defects and expand the flaws.

TBR: Do you have a favorite quote you’d like to share?Arlene: Hard to pick favorites, so here’s opening line of Rebel: “It hurts, having your head cut off.” SettiaSettia. Rebel

Thousands of years have shown that cannibalistic seagulls, tool using crows, parrots counting for a cracker, there’s not a feathered being as self-centered as the non-feathered—or as violent.’Beni. AshesThousands of years have shown that cannibalistic seagulls, tool using crows, parrots counting for a cracker, there’s not a feathered being as self-centered as the non-feathered—or as violent.’Beni. Ashes

Thousands of years have shown that cannibalistic seagulls, tool using crows, parrots counting for a cracker, there’s not a feathered being as self-centered as the non-feathered—or as violent.’Beni. Ashes

TBR: Which of your characters would you most/least like to invite to dinner, and why?Arlene: I’d like to have any of them from this story. Especially if I was in the mood for salad.

TBR: Tease us with one little thing about your fictional world that makes it different from others.Arlene: Writing from different point of views makes them stand out.

TBR: What's next for you?Arlene: The final book in my sci-fi-romance series is scheduled for release in May.
Check out the left hand column on this blog page, scroll down to click on my name and send me an email…arleneann1 at gmail dot com…TBR in the subject line, if you’d like a free e-copy of book one in the color series, Splintered Energy.

TBR: Any other published works?Arlene: More than once with MuseitUp, Decadent Publishing, and Inde.

TBR: What’s the most challenging aspect of writing? Most rewarding?Arlene: Finding the time of course. Holding a hard copy or a kindle/nook with your stories in it.

TBR: What’s the most interesting comment you have received about your books?Arlene: Original. Wonderfully weird.

Cate, I'm so grateful for your friendship. You're not only an amazing author, you spend so much time supporting others. I'm not sure how a quote from Beni from my novel Ashes, got mixed in with Settia's but neither of them care. CM, lovely to share a bit of a truely fun story with you.

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